Travel Blog

Spring 2013 Arts Calendar Highlights

Blog Post

Coming attractions on the arts calendar: reinvigorated classics and celebrated traditions. Here, some of the highlights.

New York City: The two-month-long Season of Cambodia festival is a collaboration between the Phnom Penh–based nonprofit Cambodian Living Arts (a T+L Global Vision Award winner) and dozens of cultural institutions citywide. Dancers, sculptors, puppeteers, and others will showcase Khmer heritage, both traditional (Royal Ballet of Cambodia) and contemporary (rock band Dengue Fever). April 9–May 25.

Amsterdam: It’s an artistic double Dutch: both theRijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum reopen this spring after major makeovers. The former, closed for 10 years, has added an Asian pavilion; Rembrandt’s Night Watch now takes pride of place among Vermeer’s pensive maidens and Yves Saint Laurent’s Mondrian dress. At the latter, van Gogh’s sunflowers and self-portraits come home again to Gerrit Rietveld’s Modernist building.

London: Dame Helen Mirren portrays Queen Elizabeth II—the role that won her an Oscar in 2006 for The Queen—in Peter Morgan’s new play, The Audience, at the Gielgud Theatre. The plot reimagines 60 years of private conversations between Her Majesty and prime ministers from Churchill to Cameron. February 15–June 15.

Tokyo: After an absence of almost three years, the silk-arrayed samurai, courtesans, and thunder gods of the Kabuki-za company return to Ginza to perform classical Japanese dance drama in a newly resplendent facility. Opens April 2.